This is the third building
to house The Bethesda Baptist Church. The first one was a log structure,
the second one was a two story structure with a Masonic Lodge on the second
floor. The third building, pictured above, was completed in
1955.

The Bethesda Baptist Church was organized
August 10, 1847. The following seventeen persons banded together
to form the church. Many had only recently arrived from Alabama,
Georgia, and other southeastern states. The settlement was called
Chambersville, perhaps to acknowledge that many of the early settlers had
lived in Chambers County, Alabama before they made the trek to Arkansas.
When the Church was organized, the Township (Moro) in which the building
was located lay in Dallas County, Arkansas. In 1850, Calhoun County
was organized by the Arkansas General Assembly and Moro Township became
a part of Calhoun County.

Tilmon Monroe
Brawner

Sarah Brawner,
Jr.

Green Berry
Talbot

Jane Elizabeth Brawner

Charles McClung

Sarah Higginbotham
Brawner, Sr.

Jacob Youngblood

Harriett Council

John Gardner

Mary Ellen
Brawner Talbot

John V. McCollock

Sarah Youngblood

Elizabeth McClung

Mary Gardner

Luanna Norris
Hearnsberger

Martha McCollock

Beauly Grant

Church Book Bethesda

State of Arkansas, County of Dallas

August 10th 1847

We, the scattered members of Dallas County, holding letters from
different Baptist Churches, feeling our dependence upon God and seeing
the great necessity of embodying ourselves into Christ, do give our selves
to the Lord and one another to subscribe to the following principles, to
wit:

1st. We believe in one true and living
God, the Father, the Word, and Holy Ghost.

2nd. We believe that the Scriptures comprising
the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and the only rule of faith
and practice.

3rd. We believe in the doctrine of
election according as God hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation
of the Word that we should be holy and without blame before him in love
in whom ye also trusted after that ye heard the Word of trouth{sic} the
Gospel of your salvation in whom also after ye believed ye were sealed
with that Holy Spirit of providence.

4th. We believe in the doctrine of original
sin by the fall of Adam.

5th. We believe in man's incapability by
his own free will and ability to recover himself from the fallen state
in which he is by nature.

6th. We believe that sinners are justified
in the sight of God by the imputed righteousness of Christ only.

7th. We believe that the Saints shall be
preserved in grace and never fall finally away.

8th. We believe that Baptism and the Lord's
Supper are ordinances of Jesus Christ and that true believers are the only
subjects of Baptism and that immersion is the apostolic mode.

9th. We believe in the resurrection of the
dead and in the general judgment and that the felicitous of the righteous
and the punishment of the wicked will be eternal.

10th. We believe that no minister has any right
to administer the ordinances of the Gospel but one who is regularly baptized,
called, and came under the imposition of the hands of a presbytery.

11th. We believe that none but regularly baptized members have
a right to commune at the Lord's Table.

12th. We believe that the Lord's Day should be observed as
a day of rest and religious devotion.

The Chambersville Cemetery, located adjacent to the Church, was established
in 1853. Land for the Church and Cemetery was given by Stephen Zellars
and Louanna Norris Hearnsberger. The first person buried in the Cemetery
was Martha Hearnsberger Stubblefield, the fifth child of Stephen Zellars
Hearnsberger and his first wife, Alatha Rebecca Chaffin. Louanna
Norris Hearnsberger and Stephen Zellars Hearnsberger were married in Muscogee
County, Georgia, moved to Chambersville soon afterward, and reared his
children there. Louanna and Stephen had no children.

Tilmon Monroe and Sarah Higginbotham Brawner had been Charter Members
of the County Line Baptist Church in Chambers County, Alabama. They,
along with Green Berry Talbot, Sr. and his wife, Mary Tate Anthony Talbot,
had organized the County Line Church in May of 1835.. The Brawner's
oldest child, Mary Ellender, married Green Berry Talbot, Jr., the fifth
child of Green Berry Talbot, Sr. The younger Talbot's were
married in 1842 in Chambers County, Alabama. In 1846 or early
1847, the younger Talbots and the Brawners moved to Moro Township, Dallas
County, Arkansas. It appears that several families were in the migration
party. These families included:

Mary Grant Talbot Selman and her husband, Larkin
Selman, and their two children, Benjamin and John T.

Martha Phillips Talbot Gardner and her husband, James
Gardner, and their children, Mary and Rosanna.

(Mary and Martha were sisters of Green Berry Talbot, Jr.)

Probably Jacob Youngblood's family was in the migration
party as well

.Copy of the Deed executed by Stephen Zellars Hearnsberger and his wife,
Louanna Norris Hearnsberger
to
Tilmon Brawner and John Garner, Deacons, Bethesda Baptist Church